On Thursday, Mexico’s data protection authority opened an investigation after President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador publicly revealed the number of a journalist in the American New York Times, to complain about a report that linked people close to him to drug trafficking circles.
During his regular press conference, which was broadcast on television, Lopez Obrador read the questions that this newspaper had asked him to obtain his reaction, and in the process revealed the journalist’s phone number.
Subsequently, the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data Protection announced in a statement that it had opened an investigation aimed at finding out whether revealing the phone number constitutes a “violation of the principles and duties contained” in the Mexican law on data protection.
The New York Times, via the “X” platform, denounced “a worrying and unacceptable tactic by an international official, at a time when threats against journalists are growing.”
The representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists in Mexico, Jan Albert Houston, said that what happened put the American newspaper team “at risk in one of the most dangerous countries for journalists” in the world.
The New York Times investigation was published Thursday in English and Spanish, and stated that an investigation by American government employees allowed the discovery of “possible links between influential gang operators, government employees, and advisors close to Lopez Obrador.”
The article also stated that a person close to the president met with Ismael Zambada, one of the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, before he won the elections in 2018.
The newspaper explained that “the United States never opened an official investigation against Lopez Obrador, and the employees in charge of the investigation kept it secret.”
The Mexican President described these accusations as “defamation” and urged the US administration to provide clarifications.
At the end of January, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Tim Golden published an investigation through the online media outlet ProPublica, which stated that the Sinaloa cartel paid $2 million to Lopez Obrador’s first election campaign in 2006.
The President of Mexico denounced “immoral practices” and “defamation,” accusing his political opponents of being behind them, a few days before the start of the presidential election campaign scheduled for June 2.
The candidate of the ruling Morena Party, Claudia Sheinbaum, is considered the most likely to win.
On January 26, a cybersecurity expert in Mexico denounced the leak of personal information on more than 300 journalists from an apparent presidential database, alarming press freedom advocates.
The president promised an investigation that day, accusing, as usual, “opponents” of “trying to wage a dirty war” months before the elections.
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